It may have taken a long time for Steven Spielberg to finally begin work on his biopic of the 16th President of the United States, but in a pres release just sent out it would appear Lincoln is full steam ahead and it has landed a whopper of a cast.
Previously it was announced Daniel Day-Lewis would play Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field would play his wife Mary Todd, in the film based on “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns with a screenplay adapted by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner (“Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”). The story will focus on the political collision of Lincoln and the powerful men of his cabinet on the road to abolition and the end of the Civil War. And today the cast really filled out in a big way.
Joining Day-Lewis and Field you can add the likes of Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican leader and congressman from Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of President Lincoln and the only one to live past his teenage years.
Add to that Hal Holbrook, James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Bruce McGill, Joseph Cross, David Costabile, Byron Jennings, Dakin Matthews, Boris McGiver, Gloria Reuben, Jeremy Strong, and David Warshofsky all of which will make up as yet, unannounced supporting roles in the feature.
Filming is expected to begin in the fall of 2011 for release in the fourth quarter of 2012 through Disney’s Touchstone distribution label and based on the names alone I think we can safely assume there will be a big Oscar push for this one. Don’t you?
Spielberg has been particularly busy as of late as he will have two films hitting theaters this December with War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn.
